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Yay, it’s Friday! Not the ordinary TGIF type of Friday, but the first day of Catholic fish fry season. Where I live, in Saint Louis, MO, you can’t throw a rock during Lent without hitting a great fish fry, and we take advantage of as many of them as possible. You get a great meal and you help your local parish.

I am traveling today and was surprised to see that Catholic fish fries apparently aren’t a universal phenomenon. I guess other places aren’t as into fried fish as we are in the Gateway City. That’s too bad.

As I wrote in a series of posts called 40 reasons why it’s cool to be Catholic, way back in 2012, reason number 35 was Catholic fish fries. I wrote back then,

“When the Church said we couldn’t eat meat on Friday the parish fish fry was born. When it was decided that we only had to abstain on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and the Fridays of Lent, we turned it into an art form.”

So, do yourself a favor today and instead of settling for a Filet O’Fish, head for your local parish and enjoy the real thing.